


All About Us

by isyotm



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 10:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9067273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isyotm/pseuds/isyotm
Summary: Alya is stuck on campus during a long, boring summer. But then she gets a new roommate.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Baneismydragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baneismydragon/gifts).



> Happy holidays, baneismydragon! Sorry this wasn't up on AO3 sooner, for some reason the site wasn't letting me post. But it's here now, I hope you like it!

 

Fall semester is fall rush, football games, school spirit, coats and beanies, seasonal Starbucks coffees that cost too much and taste too good to give up.

Spring semester is Pride, flowers in bloom, spring break, volleyball at the lake, picnics on the quad as they celebrate the end of finals, floating between this school year and the next, full of possibility.

Summer is death. There is nothing good about taking classes during the summer.

So far, Alya has managed to get away with full schedules in fall and spring, using her summers to bulk up her resume with jobs and internships and days for the beach or shopping with friends. But she’s going to be starting her fourth year of college in September and the 4000-level classes she’s been ignoring are looming large and ugly on her list of requirements to graduate.

Her advisor had tried to sell her on being stuck in their college town for the summer, lying through a smile that was too big to be real. “It’s beautiful here in the summer! The lake isn’t crowded at all and the cookie place on Main Street never sells out! You’ll see!”

Alya’s not an idiot; she can read between the lines. That stuff only happens because _no one is here_. But that kind of complaint is reserved for a night out with friends and she’s barely taken a sip of her beer before she’s already bemoaning her fate to the table at large.

“Can you _believe_ it?” She waves the hand holding her drink a little too emphatically and some of it splashes down onto her wrist. Marinette hands her a napkin but she’s already licked it off and wiped the rest of it onto her jeans. Tomorrow is laundry day anyway and alcohol is too expensive to waste.

“Oh, Alya, I’m so sorry,” Rose says. She leans around Juleka to pat Alya gently on the arm, her smile as sad as if she was the one stuck in a social wasteland all summer instead of escaping with her girlfriend to some exotic, sun-drenched locale. (Although if this _was_ happening to Rose, the other girl would probably handle it a little more gracefully than dragging everyone off to get drunk and listen to her whine.)

“I’m not! Sucks to be you!” Alix says with a grin and claps Alya on the back.

“If it makes you feel any better, you won’t be stuck here alone,” Rose continues.

“Oh, that’s right, I almost forgot to tell you—” Marinette starts.

“You love me too much to abandon me here all summer and you’ve decided to stay and keep me company?” Alya asks hopefully, batting her eyelashes.

Marinette smiles and flicks her friend on the forehead. “Maybe next time. No, I was going to say Nino is going to be here this summer, too. You remember Nino, right?”

The drinks are starting to get to her and she struggles through the haze in her mind to connect a name with a face. “Adrien’s friend, right?”

Marinette goes a little starry-eyed at the sound of Adrien’s name and Alya rolls her eyes. She should’ve known better than to mention Adrien. “Yes. He went to high school with us.”

She squints up at the ceiling. “Glasses? With the hat? And the headphones?” She vaguely remembers a boy from their grade arguing with her about lights for their school play. “He was a stage tech or something, right?”

Marinette beams. “Yes. And he’s looking for a place to stay for summer A so I was thinking—”

“He can’t stay where he is right now?”

Alix laughs while Rose and Marinette make disapproving noises. “ _No_ , Alya, because it’s a dorm and he’s getting kicked out at the end of spring to make room for the athletes. It’s only for a month or two. You probably won’t even notice he’s there.”

Alya groans and puts her head down on the sticky bar table. “Fine,” she grumbles. “But you owe me and Adrien owes you.” She looks up and wiggles her eyebrows. “You should trade, if you know what I mean.”

Marinette turns bright red and takes a huge gulp of her drink so she doesn’t have to respond.

 

* * *

 

There are three kinds of roommates: The good, the bad, and the awkward.

Good roommates are basically friends you also live with. You may not be friends at first, but by the time your lease is up and you have to say goodbye, you wonder how you ever could’ve lived without this person.

Bad roommates are nightmares. They’re dirty, they steal your stuff, they’re a loud, angry tornado and the only thing you can do is hold on. Saying goodbye to them is nothing short of a relief.

Awkward roommates—either the person themselves or your relationship with them—are like furniture. They take up space and you have to move around them but you don’t ever really talk to them. When you want to do something in your room, you have to make sure there’s enough room in there for both you and them. When it’s time to go, they stay behind and maybe you say goodbye, but you don’t really think about them beyond the year you lived together.

Alya expects Nino to be an awkward roommate. Her memories of him are fuzzy at best, even when she’s sober, and the ones that are clear enough for her to use as reference are…less than flattering. Did they ever have a conversation with each other that didn’t involve arguing? She certainly can’t remember one.

But to her surprise, living with Nino turns out to be…nice. Great, actually. After the first few weeks of awkwardness, tiptoeing around each other and figuring out what temperature is okay for the apartment and who gets what shelves in the fridge and the pantry, she finds out they actually have a lot in common. She walks in one night to see him on the couch watching the latest episode of one of her favorite shows, which leads to conversations about other shows they both like, and then to music they both like, and she finds herself telling him things she rarely shares with anyone else and he shares his secrets with her in return.

Honestly the only bad thing about this arrangement is that she thinks Nino is really, really attractive.

That in itself isn’t necessarily a problem. Alya sees a hundred people a day—interviewing them for her journalism class or the local newspaper, walking around on campus, riding the bus around town—and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t find at least some of them attractive. Sometimes it’s little things, like the way a girl brushes her hair behind her ear on the bus or the way a boy shakes out his hand before going back to writing notes in class. But Alya doesn’t know these people and it’s easy for her to forget about them. She knows Nino, she lives with him, and if the way her article is going, she’s finding it hard to get him out of her head so she can focus.

She glances at the clock in the corner of her laptop screen and plants her forehead on the keyboard, letting out a muffled groan. She’s been working for over an hour and she still hasn’t decided on an opening paragraph. Why can’t she just put these feelings in a box for 20 minutes so she can get something _done_?

A knock at the door breaks her out of her spiral of frustration. “Come in,” she says, head still down.

The door creaks open and she can faintly hear the music from Nino’s headphones as he peeks in. “Hey, how’s it going?”

She sits up straight and gives him her biggest, fakest smile. “Great! Really making headway.”

He glances at her screen and whatever he sees there makes him grin. “Oh yeah?”

She looks over and sighs. Apparently when she slammed her face against the keys, it filled the screen with line after line of lowercase Ys. “It’s a new font type. You know, like, Wingdings.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sorry you’re not on that cutting edge like I am.”

He laughs a little harder than her bad joke warranted, but she likes to hear it. It’s easy to make Nino smile but a laugh is rare and each one feels like a victory.

“I was coming in here to see if you were done, but now I’m wondering if maybe I should—” He starts to close the door.

“No!” she says quickly, louder than she intended to. “I mean, maybe a break would be good for me?” She takes off her glasses and pretends to wipe away a smudge as she asks, “Do you want to go out for a little bit?”

This is always the worst part of having a crush. Whenever anyone describes Alya, she’s “fun,” “the party girl.” She’s always ready to have a good time and she’s good at getting to know people, making any new additions to the group feel like they’ve known each other for years. She treats everyone like her best friend, but sometimes that makes it hard to show the people closest to her how special and important they are. And it makes it hard to show someone like Nino how she feels.

She doesn’t usually invite people to hang out one on one. That’s a special privilege reserved for her closest circle of friends or someone she really likes. She knows that Nino doesn’t know that, there’s no way he could possibly know it, but maybe he’ll be able to tell.

He takes a second too long to answer her, fidgeting with the cord of his headphones, and she can feel herself slowly starting to panic. Words bubble up in her throat, desperate to take it back, but she bites her tongue. That would just make it worse.

“Okay,” he finally says after what feels like forever. “Bubble tea?”

“Sounds perfect.”

 

* * *

 

As much as Alya likes to talk to people, she likes to study them too. Being a journalist is only half talking. The other half is observing: Situations, people, places.

Nino is an interesting study.

Her hands itch to draw him, his long lean lines, the curve of his headphones against the sharp jut of his chin, the warm brown of his skin and the matching warmth in his eyes.

Unfortunately, she’s not an artist, so instead she catalogs him, the way his hat is pushed back on his head, the way he traces the spiral logo on his bubble tea cup, the way he fiddles with the cord of his headphones.

 _Again? Interesting._ She’s wondering if that’s a nervous habit. She’s nervous too.

“The semester’s almost over,” she says. He jumps, startled out of some reverie, and glances over at her with a smile.

“Wha—? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“Where are you living next year?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“What! If you don’t hurry, you won’t have anywhere to go. I found my apartment in November and they were already running out of space.”

“You’re not living with Marinette again?”

Alya makes a face at her bubble tea. “She landed a fantastic co-op up north for fall, so she won’t be in town. Doesn’t make sense to pay for a full year if you’re not going to be around.”

Nino smiles ruefully. “Yeah, I was going to ask Adrien if he wanted to live together next year, but he’s graduating early.”

“And you?”

“Huh?”

“When are you graduating?”

“Next fall.” He makes another face. “That’s what I get for switching my major three times.”

“But you got there eventually.” She clicks their plastic cups together. “Congratulations.”

That earns her another laugh. “I’ll cheers to that. How’s your class going by the way? Editing, right?”

“Ugh, don’t talk to me about that right now. This is a happy place.”

He leans his head back and laughs, exposing more of his neck. Alya watches, entranced by the sight, until he turns to grab something behind him, hiding it from view. He turns back around with a _Candy Land_ box in his hand. “How about you think about something else for a while? Like how badly I’m going to beat you at this game?”

She leans forward with a grin. “You’re on.”

 

* * *

 

Their last night of classes before reading days (or dead days, as Alya likes to call it), Alya stops into the grocery store a few blocks away and buys two six-packs of the sickly sweet wine coolers Nino likes. They’ve worked hard this past month and a half and they deserve a chance to celebrate. She takes a picture and texts it to him along with a smiley face. As she’s walking home, her phone buzzes with an answering smiley face and a picture of her favorite beer sitting on their kitchen counter. She forwards it to Marinette and adds: _you’ve been replaced soz_

_alya how could you??? )’:_

_he buys me drinks. what have you given me besides lies_

_i made you that rly nice hat last yr_

_hm_

_I will consider reinstating you_

_:’D_

_i see everythings going well btw >)_

_and how’s Adrien if I may ask?_

_oh wait_

_)’: rude_

_you started it_

_good luck on your finals <3_

_thanks <3 I’m going to need it :[_

 

* * *

 

When she gets back to their apartment (and she’s not sure when she stopped thinking of it as her and Marinette’s apartment and started thinking of it as her and Nino’s apartment, but she likes it), Nino already has his laptop casting _Chopped_ to their TV, a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, and the drinking game rules loaded on his tablet and propped up next to the popcorn.

“Oh thank god” is the first thing out of her mouth as she drops her backpack next to the door. She pulls one wine cooler out and tosses it to him before putting the rest in the fridge, grabbing a beer for herself, and flopping down on the couch.

“We’re not even going to pretend to study first?” he asks, but he’s already twisting open the cap of his drink and taking a sip.

“Listen. If I wanted to study I wouldn’t have bought you those.” She gestures to his drink with the hand holding onto her beer. “And I wouldn’t have snagged me one of these.” She takes a long gulp. “Besides,” she adds as she wipes her mouth with her hand, “that’s what reading days are for.”

He clinks their bottles together and takes another sip. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

He presses play on his laptop.

 

* * *

 

They’re on their third episode and fourth bottle when Alya feels herself enter the drunk stage. Drinking for Alya goes like this:

Stage one is slightly tipsy. Her face starts to feel warm and she talks even more than usual.

Stage two is buzzed. She starts talking louder and louder and everything is hilarious. If she’s out with friends, she usually stops drinking around this point and switches to water.

Stage three is drunk. All the energy from the buzzed stage is gone and every bone in her body feels really heavy. If she gets to this point outside her apartment, this is usually the time she hauls herself into their designated driver’s car or an Uber because everything is too loud and she just wants to lie down and go to sleep.

She slides onto the floor (that’s another thing about the drunk stage; for some reason she wants to be on the floor) and lets her head flop back onto the cushion, laughing as Geoffrey Zakarian once again says something that makes him sound like a complete tool. She rolls her head to the side to see if Nino finds it as funny as she does and—

He’s staring at her.

Maybe it’s just her (inebriated) imagination, but it feels like he’s looking at her the way she looks at him sometimes, like she’s trying to memorize him. Their month and a half together is almost up and soon she won’t have this anymore, stupid drinking games and sharing delivery and trips to go get bubble tea when the workload gets to be too much. She’s spent the past month and a half thinking it was all one-sided but now…now she’s not so sure.

She opens her mouth to say his name, changes her mind, and scoots closer to him instead. It feels like dragging a thousand cement blocks, but the effort is worth it when she finally feels her knee press against his thigh.

“Someone’s making ice cream for dessert,” she reminds him, her voice too soft. “You’re supposed to drink.”

He looks at his drink like he’s not sure how it got into his hand, at the TV like he’s never seen one before, and back at her like maybe if he stares at her long enough all of this will start to make sense.

She really, really wants to kiss him.

It takes her a second to realize she said that out loud.

And then they’re kissing.

Alya’s been thinking about this moment since the day she came home to a box of Insomnia Cookies after her first (and worst) exam, on the verge of tears and wishing she could go to sleep and never wake up. She’s dreamed about it, how it would start, what Nino’s lips would feel like, what it would taste like.

It’s nothing like she imagined at all. It’s better.

It’s better even though Nino tastes like artificial cherry, even though she can still hear Ted Allen in the background asking “Who…is on the chopping block?”, even though her body feels too heavy to move and their glasses keep clicking together.

It’s better because it’s real, it’s _really happening_ , and this won’t be just another dream that leaves her cold and empty when she wakes up.

His lips are so soft and she can taste the bubbles from the alcohol on them. She brushes her tongue against them and relishes in the sensation, shivering slightly and feeling an answering shiver run down Nino’s spine. She wants to reach up and slide her hand through the hair on the back of his neck but her fingers meet empty air and when she opens her eyes (when did they close?), Nino is gone. She sits alone, staring up at the ceiling, as Ted Allen announces the winner of the episode.

 

* * *

 

They don’t talk again until fall semester starts. She doesn’t get any texts with silly pictures or song recommendations or simple questions about her day. She doesn’t text him either. She doesn’t know what to say. _Why did you kiss me like that if you didn’t mean it?_ She didn’t think he was that kind of person. She isn’t.

She doesn’t say anything to Marinette. She doesn’t know what to say. In the fall, she drives the three hours to help her friend set up her new apartment and puts on a brave face.

“Don’t forget about me while you’re away at your cool new job,” she mock scolds.

Marinette gives her a big hug. “I won’t, I promise.” She pulls back and they look around at Marinette’s new digs, the unfamiliar view outside her window. “I’m nervous,” the other girl admits.

Alya smiles and claps her on the back. “You’ll be great,” she says. “They’re willing to pay for all of this, they must see something great in you. I know I do.”

She doesn’t tease as Marinette wipes away a tear. “I’ll miss you.”

“Me too.”

“Come visit?” Marinette asks.

“Of course. You too, don’t be a stranger. My new digs may be smaller, but there’s always room for you.” They squeeze each other too tight, like maybe they can keep a little piece of the other for when the distance gets to be too much.

On her way back to school, her phone buzzes. She checks the sender’s name out of the corner of her eye and nearly veers off the road when she sees it’s from Nino. She pulls over onto the shoulder as quickly as possible and reads the message.

_bubble tea?_

It takes her a few minutes to stop shaking long enough to type out a response.

_sure. might take me a while though_

_driving back from mari’s new apt_

_how’s it look?_

_super cute~_

_she has a great view and so much food nearby! #jelly_

_nice!_

_see you in…2 hrs?_

_yeah_

_see you then_

 

* * *

 

She’s been sitting in her car parked outside the bubble tea place for ten minutes now. _Just go inside._

 _Okay,_ now _I’m going in._

 _Okay,_ now _._

Now _I’m going in._

 _Oh my god, just_ go _._

She opens the door and steps out in one swift motion, carefully not thinking about anything.

It’s been two months since she last saw Nino. She didn’t speak to him after the night he kissed her, didn’t see him in their apartment, and only found out he was gone when she saw his Chromecast unplugged from the back of their TV. He never spoke to her, avoided her completely, and has maintained complete radio silence until today.

She is, in a word, panicking.

She has no idea what this could be about and she’s afraid she’s going to have a complete breakdown in the restaurant. She remembers the night they came here to play _Candy Land_ and she almost starts crying. _Can you please like maybe get a grip?_

He’s sitting facing the door in the furthest corner of the restaurant, fiddling with the cord on his headphones again. She feels herself relax just a little bit. Whatever happens, he’s just as nervous as she is.

She orders her usual drink (milk tea, extra boba) and slides into the seat across from him. “Hey,” she says, trying for casual, but she doesn’t think she quite manages it.

“Hey,” he says, eyes firmly fixed on the table. She wishes he would look at her. It would make this all a lot easier if she could just see those eyes.

“How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while. Did you manage to get into that class you needed?” Small talk is easy and she’s hoping maybe if she can get him talking, things will be like they used to and everything about this won’t feel so forced, won’t hurt as much as it does.

“What? Oh yeah. Someone dropped this morning and I grabbed the spot.”

“Lucky!” she says with a bright grin that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Yeah.”

The silence stretches between them again and she can’t take it. She’s not one for quiet. “So what’s up?”

“Huh?”

She holds up her phone. “ _You_ texted _me_ , remember?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

One second goes by. Two. She waves her hand in front of his face. “Hello? Earth to Nino?”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts.

She freezes, her hand going loose around her bubble tea. “I’m sorry” could mean anything, but her mind immediately jumps to the worst conclusion. _No. Relax. You have nothing to go on here, no facts._ She takes a deep breath and asks with a calm she doesn’t feel, “Sorry for?”

“Kissing you. I—we were roommates, that wasn’t cool, and you weren’t—I mean, we were—”

She sees where he’s going with this and she exhales, a little relieved. “You were worried,” she says softly.

He glances up, eyes guilty. She’s surprised by the dark bags under his eyes. “Yeah.”

She gently places a hand on his arm and watches the tension seep from his shoulders. “I wish you would’ve said something earlier, you know.”

“Sorry, I—”

“Ah-ah, my turn to talk.” He smiles ruefully but doesn’t try to interrupt again. “If I recall correctly, I _asked_ you to kiss me. And, you know, I never told you to stop.” She gives him a wicked grin and she’s delighted to see the tips of his ears turn faintly red. “Still haven’t, now that I think about it.”

Nino looks away, embarrassed, and mutters something she can’t quite hear over the music and the humming machines.

“What?”

“I said, how about tomorrow? During dinner.”

She smiles. “It’s a date.”

_What I wouldn’t do for that smile._

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes for those who aren't familiar with the American college/university system (it can be very confusing):
> 
> \- Classes have a code associated with them: Some prefix indicating the major, a number indicating what year student the class is suggested for, and then three other numbers. For example, one of my classes had a number like ANT1200.  
> \- A popular trend here is places like Insomnia Cookies, which are places that deliver (expensive, delicious) cookies at all hours of the day and night. Also I don’t know why, but bubble tea was an essential part of my college experience so they get to drink it too.  
> \- Summer semesters are split into A, B, and C. Summer A is from May until June, B is from July until August, and C is the whole summer. Summer C classes are The Worst.  
> \- Reading days are a few days (or a week, depending on where you go to school) before finals officially begin. Students have no classes and basically you sit somewhere and study until your eyes bleed or you suffer a (caffeine-induced) mental breakdown. College is the worst.


End file.
